Dickies Arena Parking Garage
Gate Precast Company

Involved Companies

Background

This six-level, 2,200-car parking garage serves as a premium parking amenity for a 14,000 seat multipurpose arena opened in Nov. 2019. The new arena and parking garage are adjacent to each other and are part of a long-term master plan for the Memorial Center that was constructed in 1936 and hosts 2 million visitors annually. The Memorial Center has outstanding examples of Works Progress Administration-era buildings designed in a unique Western Art Deco architecture. The design of the new arena and parking garage embrace this Art Deco aesthetic. The new arena will be home to an annual stock show and rodeo and is also expected to host world-class concerts, NCAA sporting events (including basketball and gymnastics), and ice hockey. The arena project was completed through a public-private partnership.

Given the parking structure’s large size and its prominence to pedestrians and vehicles from all four sides, the Design Architect wanted to create a facade that helped the garage blend into its surroundings. Based on precedents found from the historic Memorial Complex, a series of vertical piers were developed that create a rhythm of vertical bays across three of the garage’s sides. Precast concrete was the logical material choice based on the depth and height, as well as the quantity, of these piers. The large precast concrete piers, spaced to align with and encase the structural columns, slope from bottom to top. The ability of the precast concrete forms to accomplish the stepping and tapering of these pieces was essential to creating the desired architectural solution. In conjunction with the fabricator, these piers were designed in 14 pieces to create a beautiful 3-dimensional shape that could be constructed on-site as efficiently as possible. Careful coordination of how these piers were pieced together allowed most of the joints to be hidden in inside corners of the stepped profiles between each large pier. Between these piers, a series of precast concrete spandrel panels cover the structural floor slab/edge beam and create the edge barrier. These panels incorporate a 3-dimensional relief based on Art Deco patterns. Again, the ability to efficiently and effectively incorporate this level of detail into the facade elements was part of the Design Team’s reason for choosing precast concrete for this project.